Guitarist, lutenist, author and teacher, Frederick Noad grew up in England.
Originally trained on the violin and piano he took up the guitar in his early
teens.

After graduating from Oxford he came to California in 1957 to organize
a story department for the J. Arthur Rank Organization in Hollywood. When the
film company suffered some setbacks and had to curtail its U.S. plans Noad
decided to stay on. Soon after he was offered a job playing the guitar, which
had become a favourite avocation, and he began to teach and to write for the
instrument as well.

Thus began a long and happy (if unexpected) musical career. At this time he
studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco at the latter's home in
Beverly Hills and attended master classes of Andres Segovia and Julian Bream as
a performer. Noad's first book, "Playing The Guitar" became a
paperback best seller in the sixties, and this success lead to a succession of
further instruction books and anthologies (listed below).

In 1966 Noad launched the award winning TV series "Guitar with
Frederick Noad" for PBS The programs were enthusiastically received from
coast to coast, and were credited with introducing 100,000 new players to the
instrument. The currently running educational television.series is a colour
remake of the original with the benefit of the latest electronic techniques .

Noad has been a faculty member of the University of California, Irvine,
and the California Institute of the Arts. He has performed as a soloist, as part
of a duet team, in concert with a lyric tenor and also as a continuo player in
early opera. In addition to the guitar he plays the lute and theorbo.